


Gold Coins to a Cat

by fermentthemind (cats_cradle6766)



Category: Artists RPF, EXO (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Demon Hunters, Contracts, Demon Summoning, Demons, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-23
Updated: 2019-07-23
Packaged: 2020-07-11 21:42:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,288
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19934950
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cats_cradle6766/pseuds/fermentthemind
Summary: Life is a piece of shit.Already dealing with the legacy of a cursed bloodline, Jongdae not only has to fulfill an ancient prophecy to save the world from a demon his ancestor failed to contain, now Jongdae has to deal with a demon he accidentally contracted with.It doesn't help that the demon seems to thing all of this is absolutely hilarious.Jongdae would kill him, it's just too bad he can't.





	Gold Coins to a Cat

**Author's Note:**

> *Wizard of Oz voice* PAY NO ATTENTION TO THE WRITER BEHIND THE CURTAIN.
> 
> I'm just writing this to have fun. No expectations, no deadline, no promise of completion, just good old luchen bullshit.
> 
> Title comes from the Japanese Proverb 猫に小判. I'll let you interpret it however you want.

Here’s the thing.

Life is a piece of shit. There’s really no getting around that fact. Once you get over that fact, then things can work, but until you accept the fact that life, in general, is going to be a piece of shit, it’s going to give you problems.

The fact of the matter is that life, when all of the parts and components are put together, can be pretty great. The good memories, the kindness of strangers and not strangers, the beauty of the natural world all end up balancing out the bad. It establishes a sort of pendulum swing; good shit happens, then bad shit happens. Balance.

The difficulty is that sometimes that pendulum swing lasts a lifetime, and while someone’s life must be really fucking good, Jongdae’s is complete and utter bullshit. 

Ultimately, the fact of the matter is that the primary reason Jongdae exists in a venerable Hell is in large part to the fact that he’s cursed. Not just him, either, but his entire family. For generations, the family has had shit, financial, personal, mental, emotional fuckstorms of things going wrong. The same shit that dumped Jongdae here, on the side of the road in a downpour, with a stolen motorcycle and a cigarette lighter that refuses to work.

Frustrated and giving up on lighting the proverbial cancer stick, Jongdae pockets the lighter, letting out a sigh as he looks down the deserted side street he’d parked on. It’s barely evening, but the overcast sky still makes it feel like the dead of night in places like this. The shops are all mostly the kind of place where you want to eye every person there and who walks in, checking if they’re going to make a fuss or just try to scrape by. Mostly, Jongdae is in places like this to just get through. 

Sometimes, like tonight, he’s here to potentially stop a fuss from happening. Knowing his luck, he’ll probably end up making a mess. Well, he won’t, but something will.

The awning he’s parked under keeps dripping water onto the collar of his jacket, and Jongdae turns it up higher against his skin. It doesn’t do much, but at this point it’s more force of habit for Jongdae to at least _try_ to make himself a little less miserable. He pockets the cigarette that has become soggy between his lips and kicks out the kickstand on the bike, watching the small shop opposite him turn its lights on. Hands stuffed in his pockets, Jongdae waits for another few minutes, hidden in the shadows, until a figure emerges from a side alley and makes a beeline for the shop. They don’t even look around, just slip inside as hastily and silently as possible. 

Jongdae waits, still and measuring his breaths, his eyes on the windows and the faint shadows of movement behind them. He has been following this guy for months, and this is the first day that he’s really been able to pin him down. This is the only night that Jongdae is sure he’ll have a chance to do something, especially considering the rumors that keep floating around about what kind of shit follows his target.

The kind of shit that ends up destroying entire cities, that’s what. 

Impulsively, Jongdae pulls his pack of cigarettes from is pocket, only to remember as he’s pulling one from the pack that his lighter isn’t working. Frustrated, somewhat at his own addiction but mostly at the clear nervousness that has him reaching for the damn things, Jongdae stuffs the pack back into his pocket, returning his attention to the window. He keeps his cigarettes and the lighter in his left pocket, and in his right pocket he keeps his keys. In the holster strapped over his shoulders, he carries two P320 RX’s, the magazines loaded with modified bullets. He carries spare magazines in the holsters strapped around his hips, hidden under the jacket he wears like a uniform. If someone were to stop him and ask if he had a permit for the guns, Jongdae would end up having to rifle around among his limited possessions before producing a crappy forged permit that Baekhyun had made him years ago. 

Pulling his hand from his pocket, Jongdae tucks it instead inside his jacket, resting his hand gently around the handle of one of the guns, poised to draw if necessary. 

Something happens inside the shop, the atmosphere suddenly shifting, the air going still and suddenly hot. The rain that falls near it hisses, as if vaporizing the closer it gets to the edge of the building. There is a soft noise, a muffled yell, and a sudden flash of light. Jongdae tenses, watching as his grip slips tighter around the gun. A low hum begins to build and Jongdae steps out from the shadows, crossing the street in neat extended strides. The air is sweltering, dry and intense heat radiating from within the shop. There is a sudden tremor. Those who didn’t know better would assume a small earthquake had occurred.

Jongdae knows better. Taking a deep breath, Jongdae turns towards the door, preparing to bust it down when a sudden high piercing shriek rings through the air and something wet and viscous splatters across the windows.

Blood.

Shit.

Not wasting any time, Jongdae pushes forward and kicks in the door. It shatters easily, blasting a wall of heat that had been held back and practically baking the wood. The sudden blistering heat barrels into Jongdae, overwhelming him slightly as he fights to fling himself inside. Gun drawn hastily, Jongdae hastily raises it, poised and supported before him as he enters the house. The walls and floor are spattered with what is clearly blood, and Jongdae’s lips twist at the sight. 

Absolutely unnecessary, but the other side never seems to care about who ends up as meat. From the back of the room, the low humming is the loudest, the heat the most intense, and Jongdae has to squint through burning eyes to make out the scene. A large rip in the air displays one of the portals has been opened, the figure who had stolen into the house sitting before it, muttering in frantic syllables over the summoning circle drawn on the exposed floorboards. The remnants of whoever had been in the shop before the summoner arrived are clearly what decorate the rest of the room, and Jongdae finds himself gagging at the stench. 

“Stop,” he commands, his voice coming out rough and hoarse. The man doesn’t move, and Jongdae cocks his gun, turning the safety off and aiming it at the back of the man’s head. The water clinging to Jongdae’s clothing and skin has begun to turn into steam, burning his skin and searing painfully, the metal of the gun in his hands growing hot as well. The man makes no motion to move, his endless incanting continuing. “I said stop it, you fucking assho-“

A sudden burst of air from the portal explodes through the room, throwing Jongdae back against one of the walls. Scrambling back to his feet, Jongdae reaches for one of the bricks at his waist, tucked amid the spare magazines, yet still finds himself freezing at the sight of a large creature, swathed in black vapor, emerging from the portal. Even after all this time, it still leaves him paralyzed with fear, the sight of a demon stepping into their world. 

_Fucking_ demons and their goddamn summoners.

“Not today,” Jongdae growls, forcing himself from his stupor and surging forward, with one hand leveling the gun at the summoner and firing, with the other hurling the brick at the demon. The demon looks at him just as the brick impacts on the field that surrounds it, exploding its contents all around the demon. The summoner has keeled over, a bullet through the head ending his incessant incanting. The demon screeches, rearing back as the sealant in the brick falls about it, creating a new containment circle that nullifies the summoning circle that had called it. 

The screeching that follows is what Jongdae has always assumed is unadulterated demon speech, the creature lashing out for him against the barrier, still partially within the portal itself, the summoning still incomplete and broken now that the summoner is dead. Straightening, Jongdae lets out a frustrated sigh. He’d wanted to get the summoner before any casualties, and ideally _after_ the demon was summoned, considering his sources told him the man just did low level summons for underlings. 

This wasn’t how tonight was supposed to go.

But of course, life is shit, especially Jongdae’s. Kneeling down to peer at the demon and checking the magazine in his gun, Jongdae watches at is rages at him. The heat has dissipated, but he can still feel the rivulets of sweat running down his back and chest, sticky and uncomfortable. “Here’s the thing,” Jongdae tells the demon. The creature seethes at him, wide fanged shadow mouth opening into a gaping maw that would swallow him into a void if the demon were free. It emits a bloodcurdling howl, long talons and claws forming and reforming along contorting arms that twist and writhe. “You’re not supposed to be here, in fact, no one really wants you here. And no matter what this fucker-“ Jongdae pokes the dead summoner with his gun, “- said when he brought you here, you aren’t welcome. So either go the _fuck_ back-“ he points to the portal, “- or I destroy you.”

The demon, clearly not having any of what Jongdae is saying, screeches again, its efforts to break the barrier renewed in order to tear him apart. With a sigh, Jongdae straightens up, leveling his gun at the thing, and empties the clip in the seething, howling, writhing mass. Upon contact, the bullets explode within the demon, and in a few moments, it contorts into itself, the shrieks rising to ear splitting definition before it implodes in on itself, the force shuddering the very lining of the portal from which it came. As soon as it vanishes, the blistering heat dissipates, the rushing feeling in the air vanishing and calming down as the room returns to relative silence, all save but for the low hum from the portal and two containment circles. 

Letting out a sigh and still frustrated at the events of the night, Jongdae steps forward, shoving the summoner’s corpse out of the way to assume the same place. Grabbing the chalk that had clearly been used to drawn the circle on the floor, Jongdae takes a brief moment to study it, then erases and rewrites some of the runes before finally sitting back from the circle, careful not to disturb his own containment field. The portal shudders, the hum fluctuating unpleasantly, before it begins to fold in on itself, the light and density of the room wavering for a moment before the portal folds completely closed.

The silence that follows feels hollow, broken primarily by Jongdae’s ragged breathing and the soft noise of the rain outside. The shop is dead silent, only a faint dripping occasionally from the gore still painting the room as it slides down the walls. With a long suffering sigh, Jongdae pushes himself up, grimacing as he breaks the summoning circle and then his own containment field. 

What a fucking waste of a night. 

“You shouldn’t have done that,” sounds from directly behind him.

Jumping nearly a mile high, Jongdae whirls around, gun once more ready and cocked in his hand as he stumbles backwards and away from… what the fuck was there.

‘The Fuck’ that was there reveals itself to be the figure of a man, a somewhat bemused expression on his face as he watches Jongdae, then briefly glances to the scene on the floor. “It was going so well, too,” the man says.

Jongdae, not really one to hesitate, shoots him in the face. The bullet hits right between his eyes, snapping the man’s head back and unbalancing his stance. The way this typically works is the body should crumble, a headshot killing the target instantly and the body crashes to the floor in a satisfyingly dead way. Instead, the man staggers, head still slung back, but still very much standing. Then, because Jongdae has the shittiest luck in the world, the thing - because no fucking way is that human - begins to laugh. 

Not even a terrible laugh. Of course, demons in full form don’t have terrible obvious laughs. They laugh softly, kind of intimately, like you’ve shared a joke with a lover and they’re overly fond in their amusement. Fucking demons. 

This one laughs like satin, and swaggers a bit as it rolls its head back around, the bullet hole in the dead center of its fucking face closing in the most unsettling way. The eyes are glowing now, the faint vapor rising off its figure and blurring the distinction between this reality and another. _Fucking_ demons. 

“Careful there, little hunter,” the demon purrs, its mouth splitting into a smile that is far too wide as it surveys Jongdae. “Kill me and you die, too.”

Fuck.

Jongdae’s heart stops as the demons smile widens, all white teeth sharp and terrifying. He looks down, taking quick surveillance of the summoning circle and noticing, now too late, another line that disappears _under_ the carpet that occupies the remainder of the room. 

Fuck, fuck, _fuck_.

The demons laughter fades, but Jongdae can feel it still sinking into his bones as the thing leers at him, clearly delighted with the fact that Jongdae has just, inadvertently, _bound himself_ to a mother fucking demon with a life contract. 

Life really is a piece of shit.


End file.
